INTENSE and mounting stress levels induced by excessive bureaucratic and political pressures are forcing teachers to abandon their profession in worryingly large numbers.

They are leaving to seek alternative careers in areas ranging from IT sales to administration, says the Guildford-based careers consultancy Milverton Career Solutions (MCS).

Currently, says MCS, the teaching profession is accounting for 20% of CMS's new clients, all seeking career redirection and with many of them so desperate to leave that they are prepared to resign their posts, without another job or career to go to.

And, says Peter Gooch, MCS's Guildford branch manager, the issues driving this phenomenon are invariably the same: Too much political interference brought on by constant legislative changes leading to a massive rise in bureaucratic form filling often seen by teachers as undermining the quality, effectiveness and enjoyment of their teaching.

"Whenever a teacher comes through our doors we know, almost precisely, what their reasons are for wanting a new career," said Gooch. "Not once has pay been an issue. They feel immense frustration that non-classroom demands are destroying the personal motivation that originally drew them into education.

"It's frustration stemming, as much as anything else, from excessive report writing and what they often see as meaningless but obligatory Government-inspired tomes of paperwork, which has little to do with educating students but a lot to do with maintaining increasingly rigorous, even stifling bureaucratic systems.

"In the nine years MCS has been operating as a careers consultancy, we have never experienced this level of apparent discontent or disenchantment in the education sector, and judging by reports from our other offices in the South East, Guildford is a mirror image of what's happening across the entire region."